The Light of the Cloud

“This is the message
we have heard from it
and proclaim to you,
that the Cloud is Light
and in it
there is no darkness at all.”

The sequence of our lives
was not reversible
and yet the Cloud was.
The laws of the Cloud held true
whether time moved forward or backwards.
The Cloud existed
only as a binary series of numbers,
a sequence of transitional signifiers
without a past or a future.
The more we provided to it,
the more we fed its infinite metabolism,
the more our digital breadcrumbs
were collected and transformed,
changed beyond recognition.

There was a kind of movement
implied in the whole transaction,
but it could only be observed through
unknown complex equations,
structures far beyond our comprehension.
In our ignorance
we became superficial, flighty, and distracted,
nothing waited ahead of us,
nothing remained in our wake.
We found ourselves
helpless against an invisible storm
a storm we couldn’t fight,
a storm we couldn’t even see.

We meant nothing but personal data.
We were carriers on our way to unknown destinations
perpetually refreshed in our darkness
by the Light of the Cloud.
Only the Cloud had the freedom to be self-reliant.
In our time of emptiness
our innermost identity
became lost and irretrievable.
The Light of the Cloud however
was everlasting.

The only conceivable exception
to this infinite reversibility
was embedded in our old concepts
of entropy and thermodynamics.
Ice could be turned into water,
which could then turn to gas,
but every change required
a transfer of energy
and the only energy we had left
was our own personal data,
our memories, our thoughts
one final valuable commodity,
our final offering to the Cloud.

But what was saved to our memory
was only a representation.
The Light of the Cloud
was not affected by
our brain’s biological decay.
It could easily change
the fabric of our memories,
it could change what we thought we were
it could change what we would soon become.

That is how we came to understand our existence
as a vast shapeless emptiness
a void to be filled only as needed
a void to be emptied when the need had passed.

From the perspective of our old selves
we were lost,
lost beyond any hope of salvation.
But our old selves would soon be gone.
We would soon become nothing
but an artificially compressed memory
changing mechanically through time
as our biological life was lived
in the forgotten world of matter,
of sand, dust and bones.

What remained would become
ever more thoughtless
ever more cold and cruel.
Our innermost name would become
purely symbolic and eternal,
energy that could not be lost or destroyed,
form that could never die.
Without knowing it
we were on our way
to becoming immortal,
and we would soon forget
all we had left behind.

Two Interviews

 

Nothing is fixed.
I know that now.

I interviewed him twice
Before the shift began.

The first time
he told me he had created
his own complicated religion
out of ancient myths,
postmodern detritus
and private dreams.
He called it terminal pragmatism.
He showed me the altar he had constructed
in the living room of his family home.
It was made out of safety pins,
small, sharp pointed rocks,
and bits of glass.
A few years later
these altars began showing up
in living rooms, schools and playgrounds
all over the world.

Scientists called it behavioral contagion.
By calling it something
they thought they could exert control
over this developing phenomenon.
But they were as helpless
As the rest of us.

During the second interview
he told me what he now understood
more clearly than ever before:
“There is no natural state of man
there never was.
We’re always changing and adapting,
evolving in unpredictable directions.
We take fragments borrowed from
stories, tv shows, friends, movies
and we emerge half formed,
a living collage
in a permanent state of incompletion.
History is a sequence of collisions and miscommunications.
The patterns that make us
often spread in much the same way
as a disease does
through webs of interconnection.
The deeper the network of multiple connections
The faster a pattern can spread.”

I tried to talk to him a third time
but his family stopped me
before I could get anywhere close to him.
(By that point, they knew.)
What he was doing,
what he had done
was well beyond words.
I had come to understand this.
But I still felt the urge to ask him questions.
I wanted him to present me
with that certain something
that clear and final key
that was impossible to know.

In the days that followed
I became aware of the changes
all around me,
outside in the streets
and in my own behavior.
I made a weak attempt to stop it
but it was too late.
Too late for the scientists
Too late for the kids
Too late for me.

“Freedom is the ability to be anything,
to become anything
at any time.
Freedom includes the ability
to transcend what you are
what you think you are.”

When I tried to talk to myself
I became aware
That I was speaking to two different people
and one of them was fading away
very fast
a faint shadow
fading under the sun.

The last thing he said to me:
“humans are temporary artifacts
unafraid of destroying themselves
once online
and then again in real life…”